


4. renegade

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [48]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7783540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena leaves the Hendrixes' in the middle of the afternoon, and does not come back for three years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	4. renegade

Helena leaves the Hendrixes' in the middle of the afternoon, and does not come back for three years.

There's no sign of her. There's only one single text message, begging Sarah not to worry, and then Helena -- leaves. Leaves all of them. Doesn't hug Kira goodbye, doesn't pat Donnie's hand, doesn't say _anything_ to Sarah.

After a while Sarah worries. And then she looks. And then she panics. And then she accepts, slowly, and even slower than that: forgets.

And then -- and then Helena comes back.

Not that Sarah can tell at first.

"Who the _hell_ are you," she spits, hand fumbling for a gun she doesn't carry anymore; there's yet another copy of her on the couch, brown hair cut short-short-short, wearing four worn-out layers that scream a million different patterns. Too many bracelets. Weird tan lines. But then she tilts her head and says "Sarah?" and familiarity hits Sarah in the chest like -- well. Like.

" _Helena?_ " she says, and stumbles closer. She can barely see Helena in this stranger, just around the edges -- the fold of her fingers, the birdlike tilt of her head. The rest of her: unknown.

"Yes," says Helena. "Hello, _sestra_. Good to see--"

But she can't finish before Sarah pulls her to standing and then into a hug, tight, too tight -- Helena was always weird about touch and Sarah's holding her too tight and her _sister_ , her sister came back. She'd forgotten how much she needed Helena to come back.

Helena's arms wrap around her again. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "That I left."

"We needed you," Sarah whispers, voice a teary mess. "People got hurt, Helena, you weren't _there_."

"Family Hendrick," Helena says, and Sarah is silent. "Oh."

"They're okay now," Sarah whispers into Helena's sharp shoulderbones. "But they weren't. _We_ weren't. Why did you _go_."

Helena is silent, hand rubbing circles in Sarah's back. She's all muscle, now, bones and sharp angles. The last time Sarah saw her she was pink and round and all belly. What happened to you, Helena? What happened to you?

"I couldn't," she whispers, voice anguished, and then manages to keep going. "You needed me so much it hurt. Always, always, Helena be my gun. Helena be my knife. I tried to walk a different path, for my babies, but I couldn't because family Hendrick needed people hurt and dead and they needed me to make them that way. Sarah--" Her voice breaks, and her face buries in Sarah's shoulder for a minute. And then she lets go, swipes tears from her eyes. She hugs her arms around herself, rocks. "I didn't know who I was, when I wasn't yours. And I needed to know. For me. For my babies."

"Where are they?" Sarah asks.

Helena swallows, looks away. "With their auntie. For today. I had to see you, Grace knew, I knew, and I had to see you alone. Because -- it's you. It was always you."

Sarah shakes her head from side to side, over and over, a frantic twitch of a gesture. "So, what," she says. "You just -- come back, and I give you the sugar bowl, and it's _fine?_ You can't leave people, Helena, you can't leave your family, I thought that's what you always--"

"When we were in prison," Helena says -- cutting over her, the way she didn't before. She's standing like she didn't before: solid on both feet, the way Sarah only knew her with a knife in her hand. She meets Sarah's eyes, like it's easy, like she's always known how to stand here and face her. "You, and me, and my _babies_. When we were in _prison_. Do you remember what you said."

But before Sarah can say anything, Helena says: "You said to me, through the wall, that you left Kira and you regretted it always. That if you chose you would have stayed with her. But Sarah, if I stayed it would never have been for my babies. A knife--" her voice twists off into something raw, and she shakes her head, and she keeps going, "a knife can't raise babies. A knife can only be a weapon."

"Sarah," she says. "I am not your weapon."

"You weren't," Sarah says. "Helena, you're my _sister_. You always were."

"I was only your sister," Helena says quietly, "when you needed me."

That truth cuts Sarah in the belly and for a moment they just stand there while she bleeds. Helena shakes her head again, angrily, wipes more tears from her face. "This isn't what I meant," she says. "I wanted to hug you, because you are my sister, and I wanted to tell you that I was okay. I wanted to be okay. I did not want any of this angriness. Not for you, Sarah."

"Three years worth," Sarah says. She wraps her arms around her belly. Oh. They're mirrored.

"Three years of many things," Helena says, voice a rasp. There's a smile the corner of her mouth. "Laughing and singing and eating."

"Tell me about it?" Sarah says. The words are soft and new, like being born.

Helena looks at her, weighing her, like she's trying to see if Sarah can hold it. "Okay, Sarah," she says. "Okay."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
